THE BRETONS AT HOME.
By Charles W. Wood, F.R.G.S., Author of "Through Holland," "Letters from Majorca," etc. etc.
Gateway, Dinan.
Morlaix awoke to a new day. The sunshine was pouring upon it from a cloudless sky—a somewhat rare vision in Brittany, where the skies are more often grey, rain frequently falls, and the land is overshadowed by mist.
So far the climate of Brittany resembles very much that of England: and many other points of comparison exist between Greater Britain and Lesser Brittany besides its similarity of name. For even its name it derives from us; from the fact that in the fifth and sixth centuries the Saxons, as they choose to call them, went over in great numbers and settled there. No wonder, then, that the Bretons possess many of our characteristics, even in exaggeration, for they are direct descendants of the ancient Britons.
They have, for instance, all the gravity of the English temperament, to which is added a gloom or sombreness of disposition that is born of repression and poverty and a long struggle with the ways and means of existence; to which may yet farther be added the influence of climate. Hope and ambition, the two great levers of the world, with them are not largely developed; there has been no opportunity for their growth. Ambitions cannot exist without an aim, nor hope without an object. Just as in certain dark caves of the world, where daylight never penetrates, the fish found there have no eyes, because, from long disuse of the organ, it has gradually lessened and died out; so hope and ambition amongst the moral faculties must equally disappear without an object in life.
It is therefore tolerably certain that where, according to phrenologists, the organ of Hope is situated, there the Breton head will be found undeveloped.
Now without hope no one can be constitutionally happy, and the Bretons would be amongst the unhappiest on earth, just as they are amongst the most slow-moving, if it were not for a counterbalancing quality which they own in large excess. This virtue is veneration; and it is this which saves them.
They are the most earnest and devoted, almost superstitiously religious of people. They observe their Sabbaths, their fasts and feasts with a severity and punctuality beyond all praise. With few exceptions, their churches are very inferior to those of Normandy, but each returning Sunday finds the Breton churches full of an earnest crowd, evidently assembled for the purpose of worshipping with their whole heart and soul. The rapt expression of many of the faces makes them for the moment simply beautiful, and if an artist could only transfer their fervency to canvas, he would produce a picture worthy of the masters of the Middle Ages, and read a lesson to the world far greater than that of an Angelus or a Magdalene.
It is a sight worth going very far to see, these earnest worshippers, with whom the head is never turned and the eye never wanders. The further you pass into the interior of Brittany—into the remote districts of the Morbihan, for instance—where the outer world, with its advancement and civilization, scarcely seems to have penetrated, there fervency and devotion are still full of the element of superstition; there you will find that faith becomes almost synonymous with a strict observance of prayers, penances and the commands of the Church. When the Angelus rings out in the evening, you will see the labourer, wending his way homeward, suddenly arrest his steps in the ploughed field, and with bent head, pass in silent prayer the dying moments of crépuscule.
There will scarcely be an exception to the rule, either in men or women. The reverence has grown with their growth, having first been born with them of inheritance: the heritage and the growth of centuries. All over the country you will find Calvaries erected: huge stone crosses and images of the Crucifixion, many of them crumbling and beautiful with the lapse of ages, the stone steps at their base worn with the devotion of pilgrims: crosses that stand out so solemnly and picturesquely in the gloaming against the background of the grey, cold Breton skies, and give a religious tone to the whole country.
The Bretons have ever remained a race apart, possessing their own language, their own habits, manners and customs; not becoming absorbed with other nations, nor absorbing in themselves any foreign element. Separated from Normandy by no visible boundary line, divided by no broad Channel, the Bretons are as different from the Normans as the Normans are distinct from the English. They have a high standard of integrity, of right and wrong, there is the distinct feeling of Noblesse oblige amongst them; their noblesse consisting in the fact that, being Breton, il faut agir loyalement. If they pass you their word, you may be sure they will not go from it: it is as good as their bond. They are a hundred years behind the rest of mankind, but there is a great charm and a great compensation in their simplicity.
Normandy may be called the country of beautiful churches, Brittany of beautiful towns.
This is eminently true of Morlaix, for, in spite of the removal of many an ancient landmark, it is still wonderfully interesting. In situation it is singularly favoured and romantic, placed as it is on the sides of three deep ravines. Hills rise on all sides, shutting in the houses; hills fertile and well-wooded; in many places cultivated and laid out in gardens, where flowers grow and flourish all the year round, and orchards that in spring-time are one blaze, one wealth of blossoming fruit trees.
We looked out upon all this that first morning. Not a wealth of blossoming trees, for the blossoms were over. But before us stretched the high hills, and surrounding us were all the houses of Morlaix, old and new. The sun we have said shone upon all, and we needed all this brightness to make up for the discomforts of the past night. H.C. declared that his dreams had been of tread-mills, monastic penances, and the rack; but he had survived the affliction, and this morning was eager for action.
It was market-day, and the market-place lay just to the right of us. The stalls were in full force; the butter and poultry women in strong evidence, and all the other stalls indigenous to the ceremony. There was already a fair gathering of people, many of them paysans, armed with umbrellas as stout and clumsy as themselves. For the Bretons know and mistrust their own climate, and are too well aware that the day of a brilliant morning too often ends in weeping skies. Many wore costumes which, though quaint, were not by any means beautiful. They were heavy and ungraceful, like the people themselves: broad-brimmed hats and loose trunk hose that hung about them like sacks, something after the fashion of Turkish pantaloons; and the men wore their hair in huge manes, hanging down their backs, ugly and untidy; habits, costumes and people all indicative of la Bretagne Bretonnante—la Basse Bretagne.
It was a lively scene, in which we longed to take a part; listen to the strange language, watch the ways and manners of this distinctive race, who certainly are too aboriginal to win upon you at first sight.
The hotel was wide awake this morning, full of life and movement. All who had had to do with us last night gave us a special greeting. They seemed to look upon us almost as enfants de la maison; had taken us in and done for us under special circumstances, and so had special claims upon us. Moreover, we were English, and the English are much considered in Morlaix.
We looked upon last night's adventures as the events of a dream, though at the time they had been very painful realities. The first object in the hotel to meet our gaze was André, his face still tied up like a mummy, still looking the Image of Misery, as if he and repose had known nothing of each other since we had parted from him. He was, however, very anxious for our welfare, and hoped we had slept well on our impromptu couches.
Next, on descending, we caught sight of Madame, taking the air and contemplating the world at large at the door of her bureau. The moment we appeared the air became too strong for her, and she rapidly passed through her bureau to a sanctum sanctorum beyond, into which, of course, we could not penetrate. We looked upon this as a tacit confession of a guilty conscience, and agreed magnanimously to make no further allusion to her lapsed memory. So when we at length met face to face, she, like André, was full of amiable inquiries for our health and welfare.
We sallied forth, and whatever we thought of Morlaix last night, we thought no less of it to-day.
It is a strange mixture of ancient and modern, as we were prepared to find it. On all sides rose the steep hills, within the shelter of which the town reposes. The situation is exceedingly striking. Stretching across one end of the town with most imposing effect is the enormous viaduct, over which the train rolls towards the station. It possesses also a footway for pedestrians, from which point the whole town lies mapped at your feet, and you may trace the faraway windings of the river. The viaduct is nearly two hundred feet high, and nearly four hundred yards long, and from its position it looks even more gigantic than it is. It divides the town into two portions, as it were, the outer portion consisting of the port and harbour: and from this footway far down you may see the picturesque shipping at repose: a very modest amount to-day moored to the river side, consisting of a few barges, a vessel or two laden with coal or wood, and a steamer in which you might take passage for Hâvre, or perhaps some nearer port on the Brittany Coast.
It is a charming picture, especially if the skies overhead are blue and the sun is shining. Then the town is lying in alternate light and shade; the pavements are chequered with gabled outlines, long drawn out or foreshortened according to their position. The canal bordering the old market-place is lined with a long row of women, alternately beating linen upon boards and rinsing it in the water. We know that they are laughing and chattering, though we cannot hear them; for a group of even sober Breton women could not be together and keep silence. They take life very seriously and earnestly; with them it is not all froth and evaporation; but this is their individual view of existence; collectively there comes the reaction, forming the lights and shadows of life, just as we have the lights and shadows in nature. That reaction must come is the inevitable law; and possibly explains why there are so many apparent contradictions in people.
Morlaix has had an eventful history in the annals of Brittany. It takes its name from Mons Relaxus, the hill that was crowned by the ancient castle; a castle which existed at the time of the Roman occupation, if the large number of medals and pieces of Roman money discovered in its foundations may be taken as indicating its epoch. Many of these remains may be seen in the small museum of the town. They date from the third century.
The progress of Morlaix was slow. Very little is recorded of its earlier history. Though the Romans occupied it, we know not what they did there. Nearly all traces of Roman architecture have disappeared. The town has been frequently sacked and pillaged and burnt, sacrilege in which the English have had many a hand; and even Roman bricks and mortar will yield in time to destructive agencies.
Even in the eleventh century it was still nothing more than a small fishing town, a few houses nestling in the ravine, and sheltered by a huge rampart on the south-west. Upon the Mons Relaxus, the hill giving its name to the town, stood the lordly castle, the two rivers flowing, one on either side, which further down unite and form one stream. To-day all traces of the castle have disappeared and the site is planted with trees, and quiet citizens walk to and fro beneath their shade, where centuries ago there echoed the clash of arms and the shouts of warriors going forth conquering and to conquer. For in those days the Romans were the masters of the world, and seemed born only for victory.
In the twelfth century, Morlaix began a long series of vicissitudes. In 1187 Henry II. of England laid siege to it, and it gave in after a resistance of nine weeks. It was then in possession of the Dukes of Brittany, who built the ancient walls of the town, traces of which yet exist, and are amongst the town's most interesting remains.
The occupation of the English being distasteful to the Bretons, they continually rebelled against it; though, as far as can be known, the English were no hard task-masters, forcing them, as the Egyptians did the Israelites, to make bricks without straw.
In 1372 the English were turned out of their occupation, and the Dukes of Brittany once more reigned. It was an unhappy change for the discontented people, as they soon found. John IV., Duke of Brittany, was guilty of every species of tyranny and cruelty, and many of the inhabitants were sacrificed.
Time went on and Morlaix had no periods of great repose. Every now and then the English attacked it, and in the reign of Francis I. they pillaged and burnt it, destroying antiquities that perhaps to-day would have been worth many a king's ransom. This was in the year 1532.
In 1548, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, a child of five years only, disembarked at the wonderfully quaint little town of Roscoff to marry the Dauphin of France, who afterwards reigned as Francis II. She made a triumphal entry into Morlaix, was lodged at the Jacobin convent, and took part in the Te Deum that was celebrated in her honour in Notre Dame du Mur. This gives an additional interest to Morlaix, for every place visited by the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of Scots, every record preserved of her, possesses a romantic charm that time has been unable to weaken.
As she was returning to the convent after the celebration of the Te Deum, and they were passing what was called the Gate of the Prison, the drawbridge gave way and fell into the river. It was fortunately low water, and no lives were lost. But the Scots Guards, separated from the young Queen by the accident, took alarm, thought the whole thing had been planned, and called out: "Treason! Treason!" Upon which the Chevalier de Rohan, who rode near the Queen, quickly turned his horse and shouted: "Never was Breton guilty of treason!"
And this exclamation may be considered a key-note to their character. The Bretons, amongst their virtues, may count that of loyalty. All is fair in love and war, it is said; but the Bretons would betray neither friend nor foe under any circumstance whatever.
For two hundred years Morlaix has known peace and repose, as far as the outer world is concerned. She has given herself up to religious institutions, and has grown and prospered. So it comes to pass that she is a strange mixture of new and old, and that side by side with a quaint and wonderful structure of the Middle Ages, we find a house of the present day flourishing like a green bay tree—a testimony to prosperity, and an eyesore to the lover of antiquity. But these wonders of the Middle Ages must gradually disappear. As time rolls on, and those past centuries become more and more remote, the old must give place to the new; ancient buildings must fall away in obedience to the inevitable laws of time, progress and destruction.
This is especially true of Morlaix. Much that was old-world and lovely has gone for ever, and day by day something more is disappearing.
We sallied forth, but unaccompanied by Misery, who was hard at work in the hotel, preparing us rooms wherein, as he expressed it, we should that night lodge as Christians. Whether, last night, he had put us down as Mahometans, Fire Worshippers, or heathens of some other denomination, he did not say.
The town had lost the sense of weirdness and mystery thrown over it by the darkness. The solemn midnight silence had given place to the activity of work and daylight; all shops were open, all houses unclosed; people were hurrying to and fro. Our strange little procession of three was no more, and André carrying a flaring candle would have been anything but a picturesque object in the sunshine.
But what was lost of weirdness and mystery was more than made up by the general effect of the town, by the minute details everywhere visible, by the sense of life and movement. Usually the little town is quiet and somewhat sleepy; to-day the inhabitants were roused out of their Breton lethargy by the presence of so many strangers amongst them, and by the fact of its being market day.
More than even last night, we were impressed by the wonderful outlines of the Grand' Rue, where the lattice had been lighted up and the mysterious vision had received a revelation in gazing upon H.C. To-day behind the lattice there was comparative darkness, and the vision had descended to a lower region, and the unromantic occupation of opening a roll of calico and displaying its advantages to a market woman who was evidently bent upon driving a bargain. The vision caught sight of H.C., and for the moment calico and everything else was forgotten; the market woman no doubt had her calico at her own price.
The street itself is one of the most wonderful in France. As you stand at the end and look down towards Les Halles, you have a picturesque group, an assemblage of outlines scarcely to be equalled in the world. The street is narrow, and the houses, more and more overhanging as they ascend floor by floor, approach each other very closely towards the summit. The roofs are, some of them, gabled; others, slanting backwards, give room for picturesque dormer windows. Wide lattices stretch across some of the houses from end to end; in others the windows are smaller and open outwards like ordinary French windows, but always latticed, always picturesque.
Below, on the ground floor, many of the houses are given up to shops, but, fortunately, they have not been modernised.
The whole length of the front is unglazed, and you gaze into an interior full of mysterious gloom, in which you can scarcely see the wares offered for sale. The rooms go far back. They are black with age: a dark panelling that you would give much to be able to transport to other scenes. The ceilings are low, and great beams run across them. The doors admitting you to these wonderful old-world places match well their surroundings. They are wide and substantial, with beams that would effectually guard a prison, and wonderful old locks and keys and pieces of ironwork that set you wild with longings to turn housebreaker and carry away these ancient and artistic relics.
You feel that nothing in the lives of the people who live in these wonderful tenements can be commonplace. However unconscious they may be of the refining influence, it is there, and it must leave its mark upon them.
At least, you think so. You know what the effect would be upon yourself. You know that if you could transport this street bodily to some quiet nook in England and surround it by velvety lawns and ancient trees that have grown and spread with the lapse of ages, your existence would become a long and romantic daydream, and you would be in danger of living the life of a recluse and never separating yourself from these influences. Custom would never stale their infinite variety; familiarity would never breed contempt. Who tires of wandering through a gallery of the old masters? who can endure the modern in comparison? It is not the mere antiquity of all these things that charm; it is that they are beautiful in themselves, and belong to an age when the Spirit of Beauty was poured out upon the world from full vials held in the hands of unseen angels, and what men touched and created they perfected.
But the vials have long been exhausted and the angels have fled back to heaven.
The houses all bear a strong family resemblance to each other, which adds to their charm and harmony. Most of them possess two doors, one giving access to the shop we have just described, the other admitting to a hall or vestibule, panelled, and often richly sculptured. Above the rez-de-chaussée, two or three stories rise, supported by enormous beams richly moulded and sculptured, again supported in their turn by other beams equally massive, whose massiveness is disguised by rich sculpture and ornamentation: a profusion of boughs, of foliage, so beautifully wrought that you may trace the veins in the leaves of niches, pinnacles and statues: corner posts ornamented with figures of kings, priests, saints, monsters, and bagpipers. The windows seem to multiply themselves as they ascend, with their small panes crossed and criss-crossed by leaden lines: the fronts of many are slated with slates cut into lozenge shapes; and many possess the "slate apron" found in fifteenth century houses, with the slates curved outwardly to protect the beam.
By the second door you pass down a long passage into what originally was probably a small yard, but has now been turned into a living-room or kitchen covered over at the very top of the house by a skylight. This is an arrangement now peculiar to Brittany. The staircase occupies one side of the space, and you may trace the windings to the very summit, curiously arranged at the angles. These singularly-constructed rooms have given to the houses the name of lanternes. Every room has an enormous fireplace, in which you might almost roast an ox, built partly of wood and stone, richly carved and ornamented. But let the eye rest where it will, it is charmed by rich carvings and mouldings, beams wonderfully sculptured, statues, ancient niches and grotesques.
In one of these houses is to be found a wonderful staircase of carved oak and great antiquity, that in itself would make Morlaix worth visiting. It is in the Flamboyant style, and was probably erected about the year 1500. For Brittany is behind the age in its carvings as much as in everything else, and this staircase in any other country might safely be put down to the year 1450. It is of wonderful beauty, and almost matchless in the world: a marvel of skill and refinement. It possesses also a lavoir, the only known example in existence, with doors to close when it is not in use; the whole thing a dream of beautiful sculpture.
One other house in Morlaix has also a very wonderful staircase; still more wonderful, perhaps, than that in the Grand' Rue; but it is not in such good preservation. The house is in the Rue des Nobles, facing the covered market-place. It is called the house of the Duchesse Anne, and here in her day and generation she must have lived or lodged.
The house is amongst the most curious and interesting and ancient in Morlaix, but it is doomed. The whole interior is going to rack and ruin, and it was at the peril of our lives that we scrambled up the staircase and over the broken floors, where a false step might have brought us much too rapidly back to terra firma. Morlaix is not enterprising enough to restore and save this relic of antiquity.
The staircase, built on the same lines as the wonderful staircase in the Grand' Rue, is, if possible, more refined and beautiful; but it has been allowed to fall into decay, and much of it is in a hopelessly worm-eaten condition. H.C. was in ecstasies, and almost went down on his knees before the image of an angel that had lost a leg and an arm, part of a wing, and the whole of its nose; but very lovely were the outlines that remained.
"Like the Venus of Milo in the Louvre," said H.C., "what remains of it is all the more precious for what is not."
It was not so very long since we had visited the Louvre together, and he had remained rapt before the famous Venus for a whole hour, contemplating her from every point of view, and declaring that now he should never marry: he had seen perfection once, and should never see it again. This I knew to be nothing but the enthusiasm of the moment. The very next pretty face and form he encountered, animated with the breath of life, would banish from his mind all allegiance to the cold though faultless marble image.
The exterior of the house of the Duchesse Anne was as remarkable as the interior for its wonderful antiquity, its carvings, its statues and grotesques, its carved pilasters between the windows, each of different design and all beautiful, its gabled roofs and its latticed panes that had long fallen out of the perpendicular. Both this and the next house were closed; and it was heartbreaking to think that perhaps on our next visit to Morlaix empty space would here meet our gaze, or, still worse, a barbarous modern aggression.
Few towns now, comparatively speaking, possess fifteenth century remains, and those few towns should preserve them as amongst their most cherished treasures.
Morlaix is still amongst the most favoured towns in this respect. Go which way you will, and amongst much that is modern, you will see ancient houses and nooks and corners that delight you and take you back to the Middle Ages. Now it will be an old house in the market-place that has escaped destruction; now a whole court up some narrow turning, too out-of-the-way to have been worthy of demolition; and now it will be a whole street, like the Grand' Rue, which has been preserved, no doubt of deliberate intent, as being one of the most typical fifteenth century streets in the whole of France, an ornament and an attraction to the town, raising Morlaix out of the commonplace, and causing antiquarians and many others to visit it.
For if all the houses of the Grand' Rue are not actually fifteenth century—and they are not—they all look of an age; they all belong to the same school of architecture, and the harmony of the whole street is perfect. Looking upwards, the eye is delighted at the outlines of the gabled roofs that stand out so clearly and sharply against the background of the sky; and you return to it over and over again during your sojourn in Morlaix, and each time you gaze longer and think it more beautiful than before.
These old-world towns and streets are very refreshing to the spirit. We grow weary of our modern towns, with their endless monotony and their utter absence of all taste and beauty. Just as when sojourning in a country devoid of monuments and ruins, the mind at length absolutely hungers for some grand, ecclesiastical building, some glorious vestige of early ages; so when we have once grown familiar with mediæval towns and outlines, it becomes an absolute necessity occasionally to run away from our prosy nineteenth century habitations, and refresh our spirit, and absorb into our inmost nature all these refining old-world charms. It is an influence more easily felt than described; also, it does not appeal to all natures. We can only understand Shakespeare by the Shakespeare that is within us—an oft quoted saying but a very true one; and Pan might pipe for ever to one who has no music in his soul; and the rainbow might arch itself in vain to one who is colour-blind.
Morlaix also, as we have said, owes much to its situation.
Lying between three ravines, it is most romantically placed. Its people are sheltered from many of the cruel winds of winter, and even the sturdy Bretons cannot be quite indifferent to the stern blast that comes from the East laden with ice and snow.
Not that the people of Morlaix look particularly robust, though we found them very civil and often very interesting. We must pay for our privileges, and if a town is built in a hollow, and is sheltered from the east wind, the chances are that its climate will be enervating. This, of course, has its drawbacks, and sets the seal of consumption on many a victim that might have escaped in higher latitudes.
One charming type we found in Morlaix, consisting of a family that ought to have lived in the middle ages, and been painted by Raphael, or have served as models for Fra Angelico's angels. Three generations.
We were climbing the Jacob's ladder leading to the station one day, when we chanced upon an old man who sold antiquities. We were first taken with his countenance. It had honesty and integrity written upon it. Had he been a German, living in Ober-Ammergau, he would certainly have been chosen for the chief character in the play—a play, by the way, that has always seemed questionable, since the greatest and most momentous Drama creation ever witnessed appears too sacred a theme to be theatrically represented, even in a spirit of devotion.
Our antiquarian was growing old. His face was pale, beautiful and refined, with a very spiritual expression. The eyes were of a pure blue, in which dwelt almost the innocence of childhood. He was slightly deformed in the back. There was a pathetic tone in the voice, a resigned expression in the face, which told of a long life of struggle, and possibly much hardship and trouble—the latter undoubtedly.
We soon found that he had in him the true artistic temperament. His own work was beautiful, his carvings were full of poetical feeling. If not a genius himself, he was one whose offspring should possess the "sacred fire," which must be born with its possessor, can never after be kindled. In one or two instances we pointed to something superlatively good. "Ah, that is my son's work," he said; "it is not mine." And there was an inflection in the voice which told of pride and affection, and perhaps was the one bright spot in the old man's pilgrimage, perhaps his one sorrow and trouble—who could tell? We had not seen the son; we felt we must do so.
The old man's most treasured possession was a crucifix, to which he pointed with a reverential devotion.
"I have had it nearly thirty years," he said, "and I never would sell it. It is so beautiful that it must be by a great master—one of the old masters. People have come to see it from far and near. Many have tempted me with a good offer, but I would never part with it. Now I want the money and I wish to sell it. Will you not buy it?"
It was certainly exquisitely beautiful; carved in ivory deeply browned with age. We had never seen anything to equal the position of the Figure upon the Cross; the wonderful beauty of the head; the sorrow and sacredness of the expression; the perfect anatomy of the body. But in our strictly Protestant prejudices we hesitated. As an object of religion of course we could have nothing to do with it; the Roman Catholic creed, with its outward signs and symbols, was not ours; who even in our own Church mourned the almost lost beauty and simplicity of our ancient ritual; that substitution of the ceremonial for the spiritual, the creature for the Creator, which seems to threaten the downfall of the Establishment. Would it be right to purchase and possess this beautiful thing merely as an object of refined and wonderful art? I looked at H.C. In his face at least there was no hesitation. Such a prize was not to be lost if it could be obtained within reasonable limits. It must take a place amongst his old china, his headless Saints and Madonnas!
The first time we came across the old man—it was quite by accident that we found him out—we felt that we had discovered a prize in human nature: one of those rare exceptions that exist still in out-of-the-way nooks and corners, but are seldom found. It is so difficult to go through the world and remain unspoiled by it; especially for those who, having to work for their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, have to come into daily contact with that harder, coarser element in human nature, that, for ever over-reaching its neighbour, tries to believe that the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong.
The son was away from the town on the occasion of our first visit. The father seemed proud of him in a quiet, gentle sort of way, and gentleness was evidently the key-note to his character. He said his son had carried off all the prizes in a Paris School of Art, and one prize that was especially difficult to obtain. Would we come again and see him, and see his work?
We went again. At the door-sill a little child greeted us; the most beautiful little face we had ever seen. Nothing in any picture of an old master ever equalled it. At the first moment we almost thought it the face of an angel, as it looked up into our faces with all the confidence and innocence of infancy. The child might have been eighteen months old, just at the age when the eyes begin to take that inquiring look upon everything, as if they had just awakened to the fact that they had arrived upon a scene where all was new and strange. The eyes of this child were large and of a celestial blue; fair curls fell over his shoulders; his cheeks were round like a cherub's, and had the hue of the damask rose. The strangest part about the face was its refinement, as if the little fellow, instead of being born of the people, had come of a long line of noble ancestors.
We went into the workshop, and there found the father of the child at work, the son of the old man.
We no longer wondered at the child's beauty; it was a counterpart of the father's, but to the latter was added all the grace and maturity of manhood. Unlike the old man, the face was round and flushed with the hue of health. Large dark blue eyes looked out earnestly at you from under long dark lashes. The head was running over with dark crisp curls. The face was also singularly refined, had an exceedingly pure and modest expression. No Apollo, real or imagined, was ever more perfect in form and feature. To look upon that face was to love its owner.
He was hard at work, carving, his wonderfully-drawn plans about him. It was certainly the best modern work we had ever seen; and here, we felt, was a genius. Probably it had been hampered for want of means, as so many other geniuses have been since the foundation of the world. He ought to have been known and celebrated; the master of a great and famous atelier in the chief of gay cities; appreciated by the world—and perhaps spoilt by flattery. Instead of which, he was working for his daily bread in a small town, unknown, unappreciated; toiling in a small, retired workshop, where people seldom penetrated, and a good deal of his work depended upon chance. Yet, if his face bespoke one thing more than another, it was happiness and contentment. Ambition seemed to have no part in his life. That he loved his art was evident from the tenderness with which he handled his drawings and looked upon his carvings. It may be that this love was all-sufficient for him, and that as long as he had health to work, and fancy to create, and daily bread to eat, he cared for nothing more.
The little rift within the lute? Ah, who is without it? What household has not its skeleton? Where shall we find perfect happiness—or anything perfect? In this instance it was soon apparent to us; and again we marvelled at the inconsistency of human nature; the incongruity of things; the way men spoil their lives and make crooked things that ought to be, and might have been, so straight.
We could not help wondering what sort of help-meet this Apollo had chosen for himself; what angelic mother had given to the world this little blue-eyed cherub, whose fitting place seemed not earth but heaven.
Even as we wondered we were answered. A voice called to the child from above, and the child turned its lovely head, but moved not. Then the owner of the voice was heard descending, and the mother appeared. We were dismayed. Never had we seen a woman more abandoned and neglected. Everything about her was slovenly. Her hair fell about her face and shoulders in tangled masses; her clothing was torn and neglected. We had seen such exhibitions in the dens of London, never in a decent household. It made us feel inexpressibly sad and sorrowful. Here was a great mystery; two people terribly ill-matched. We glanced at the husband, expecting to see a flush mantling his brow. But he quietly went on with what he was about, as though he saw not, and mother and child disappeared upstairs.
Here, then, whether he knew it or not, was the little rift within the lute. An ill-assorted marriage, a life-long mistake. Had he looked and chosen above him, his help-meet might have assisted him to rise in the world and to become famous. As it was, he had been caught by a pretty face—for, with due care and attention and a settled expression, the face would have been undoubtedly pretty—and had sealed his fate. With such a wife no man could rise.
We left him to his art and went our way, very sorrowful. It was a lovely morning, and we started back for the hotel, having arranged to take a drive at a certain hour along the river banks to the sea.
We found the conveyance ready for us. Monsieur, by special attentions, was making up for the lapses of that one terrible night.
Above us, as we went, stretched the gigantic viaduct, so singular a contrast with the ancient houses and remains of this old town; forming a comparison that certainly makes Morlaix one of the most remarkable towns in France. Beneath it rose the houses on the rocky slopes, one above another, so that from the back you may almost enter them from the roof, as you do some of the Tyrolese châlets. In Morlaix it has given rise to a proverb: "Du jardin au grenier, comme on dit à Morlaix."
Beneath the viaduct, far down, was the river and the little port, where vessels of considerable tonnage may anchor, and which has added much to the prosperity of the town, that trades largely in corn, vegetables, butter, honey, wax, oil-seeds, and—as we have seen—horses. There is also a large tobacco manufactory here, which gives employment to an immense number of hands.
We passed all this and went our way down the right bank of the river. The scenery is very picturesque; the heights are well wooded, broken and undulating. Some of the richer inhabitants of Morlaix have built themselves houses on the heights; charming châteaux where they spend their summers, and luxuriate in the fresh breezes that blow up from the sea. Across there on the left bank of the river, rises the convent of St. François, a large building, where the religieux retire from the world, yet are not too isolated.
And on this side, on the Cours Beaumont, a lovely walk planted with trees, we come to the Fontaine des Anglais, so called because here, in 1522, six hundred English were surprised asleep by the people of Morlaix, and slain. They had, however, courted their own doom. Henry VIII. had picked a quarrel with Francis I. for seizing the ships of English merchants in French ports. The English king had escorted with his fleet the Emperor Charles V., of Spain, under command of the Earl of Surrey, and in returning, it entered the river, surprised Morlaix, burnt and sacked the town, and murdered many of its inhabitants. They left it loaded with spoil; and when the inhabitants surprised these six hundred English they revenged themselves upon them without mercy.
To-day, we had no sooner reached the spot than suddenly the clouds gathered, the sky was overcast, a squall rose shrieking and whistling amidst the trees, and there was every appearance of a downpour. We were not prepared for it, but we rashly continued our way. At last, just before we reached a small road-side cabaret, down it came, as if the whole reservoir of cloudland had been let loose.
We hastily stopped at the auberge, already half-drenched, and H.C. crying out "Any port in a storm," we entered it. It was humble enough, yet might every benighted traveller in every storm find as good a refuge!
The good woman of the house was standing at her poêle, preparing the mysteries of the mid-day dinner. Her husband, she said, had gone into Morlaix, with fish to sell—it was one of their chief means of livelihood. He bought the fish from the fishermen who came up the river, and sold it again to the hotels. One of his best customers was the Hôtel d'Europe, and M. Hellard was a brave monsieur, who never beat them down in their prices, and had always a pleasant word for them. Madame was very amiable too, for the matter of that.
It was rather a hard life, but what with that and the little profit of the auberge, they managed to make both ends meet.
She had three children. The eldest was a girl, and had her wits about her. She had been to Paris with her father, and had seen the Exhibition, and talked about it like a grown-up person. But her father had taken her one night to the Théâtre des Variétés in the Champs Elysées, and the girl had been mad ever since to become a chanteuse and an actress.
The ambitious child—a girl of fourteen—at this moment came down stairs, and a more forbidding young damsel we had seldom seen. Her mother had evidently no control over her; she was mistress of the situation; ordered her mother about, slapped a younger brother, a little fellow who was playing at a table with some leaden soldiers, and finally, to our relief, disappeared into an inner room. We saw her no more.
"It is always like that," sighed the poor mother, who seemed by no means a woman to be lightly sat upon: "always like that ever since she went that malheureux voyage to Paris. It has changed her character; made her dissatisfied with her lot; I fear she will one day leave us and go back to Paris for good—or rather for evil; for she will have no one to look after her; and, I am told, it is a sink of iniquity. I was never there, and know very little about the ways of large towns. Morlaix is quite enough for me. But she is afraid of her father, that is one bonheur."
All this time she had been brewing us coffee, and now she brought it to us in her best china, with some of the spirit of the country which does duty for cognac and robs so many of the Bretons of their health and senses. But it was not a time to be fastidious. To counteract the effects of the elements and drenched clothes, we helped ourselves liberally to a decoction that we thought excellent, but under other conditions should have considered poisonous.
The while our hostess, glad of an appreciative audience, poured into our ears tales and stories of herself, her life and the neighbourhood. How she had originally belonged to the Morbihan, and when a girl dressed in the costume of her country, with the short petticoats and the picturesque kerchief crossed upon the breast. How her father had been a well-to-do bazvalan and made the Sunday clothes for the whole village. And how she had met her fate when her bonhomme came that way on a visit to an old uncle in the village, and in six months they were married, and she had come to Morlaix. She had never regretted her marriage. She had a good husband, who worked hard; and if they were poor, they were far from being in want. She had really only one trouble in the world, and that was that she could do nothing with her eldest girl. She would obey no one but her father; and even he was losing control over her.
"Is her father much away?" we asked, thinking that the young damsel looked as if she were under no very stern discipline.
"Not on long voyages, such as going to Paris or the Morbihan," replied the woman; "but he is often away for half-a-day or so, selling his fish in Morlaix and doing commissions for their little auberge. And then," she added with a condoning smile, "of course he sometimes met with a camarade who enticed him to drink a glass too much, though that was a rare occurrence. Mais que voulez-vous? Human nature was weak; and for her part she really thought that men were weaker than women. Certainly they were more self-indulgent."
"It is because they have more temptations," said H.C., pleading the cause of his own sex. "Women had more to do with home and the pot-au-feu."
At this moment our hostess's pot-au-feu began to boil over, and she darted across the room, took it off the fire and returned, laughing.
"Even the pot-au-feu we cannot always manage, it seems," she remarked; "and so there are faults on all sides. Sometimes on a Sunday her husband went and spent the day at Roscoff, where he had a cousin living. Did messieurs know Roscoff—a deadly-lively little place, with a quaint harbour, where there was a chapel to commemorate the landing of Marie Stuart?"
We said we did not know it, but purposed visiting it on the morrow if the skies ceased their deluge.
"Why does your husband not turn fisherman," we asked, "instead of buying his fish from others, and so selling it second-hand at a smaller profit? You are so close to the sea."
"Dame," replied the woman, "it is not his trade. He was never brought up to the sea; always hated it. And for the rest," she added, with a shudder, "Heaven forbid that he should turn fisherman! She had once dreamed three times running that he was drowned at sea; and she had feared the water ever since. She had almost made her husband take a vow that he would never go upon the sea. He generally took part once a year in the regatta; of course, there could be no danger; but she trembled the whole time until she saw him returning safe and sound. No, no! Chacun à son métier."
Here we interrupted the flow of eloquence, though the woman was really interesting with her straightforward confidences, her rather picturesque patois, and her numerous gestures.
We went to the door and surveyed the elements. The skies were cowering; the rain came down like a revengeful cataract; the road was flooded, and the water was beginning to flood the room. In front the river looked cold and threatening; it flowed towards the sea with an angry rush; our vehicle was refreshing itself before the door, and the horse and driver had taken refuge in the stable. The tops of the surrounding hills were hidden in mist; everywhere the rain roared. The scene was dreary and desolate in the extreme.
At this moment the driver appeared. "Was it of any use waiting? He knew the climate pretty well; the rain would never cease till sundown. Had we not better make the best of it and get back to Morlaix?"
We thought so, and gave the signal for departure. Our patience was exhausted—and so was our coffee. Our hostess was distressed. At least we would borrow an umbrella, and her husband's thick coat, and perhaps her shawl for our knees. She was too good; genuinely kind hearted; and in despair when we accepted nothing. We bade her farewell, settled her modest demands, and set out for Morlaix.
Arrived at the hotel like drowned rats, Madame was all anxiety and motherly solicitude, begged us to get between blankets and have tisane administered or some eau sucrée with a spoonful of rum in it. She bemoaned the uncertainty of the climate, and hoped we were not going to have bad weather for our visit. And when we declined all her polite attentions, assuring her that a change of clothing was all we needed, and all we should do, she declared that she was amazed at our temerity, but that she had the greatest admiration for the constitution and courage of the people of Greater Britain.